“In this guest post, Richard Schmidt discusses how much Sr-90 was in the fish caught in the Connecticut River, the fish that caused Governor Shumlin to say he wouldn’t eat fish from the river. Schmidt points out that people are advised to restrict their intake of local fish due to mercury. The mercury comes from coal plants. Neither the strontium nor the potassium in the fish is a hazard.”

An exclusive Interview with Nextbigfuture with Terrapower nuclear Engineer Robert Petroski. He describes how reactors using depleted uranium could potentially play a major role in ameliorating the world’s energy problems.

Progress on low-carbon energy will come from a four-fold growth in nuclear power to 40GW (gigawatts), 63GW of new hydroelectric capacity, a growth of 22GW in gas-fired generation18, 48GW19 of new wind capacity to more than double the current capacity and solar capacity expected to reach 5GW of by 2015. The country aims to have 100 gigawatts (GW) of on-grid wind farm generating capacity by the end of 2015 and to generate 190 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of wind energy annually, the China Securities Journal reported, citing a government plan. Of the planned 10 GW of solar power capacity in 2015, photovoltaic power installations will account for 9 GW and concentrated solar thermal power capacity will make up the rest, the report said.

It has been more than five months since the US NRC started spending a large quantity of unplanned resources in response to the Fukushima event. However, the agency has not requested any additional resources from congressional appropriators. The result is a squeeze on activities associated with new license applications. That will slow those efforts.

The NRC Public Affairs Office has indicated that there is no plan to change the situation.

In a breathless press release issued early this morning (08/29/11), Rep. Ed Markey, D- Mass., claims that U.S. nuclear reactors impacted by hurricane Irene had a far rougher time than reported in the news media.

What’s important is that none of the information items in the NRC Event Report indicate that the safety of the reactors was compromised in any way. There were no injuries to plant personnel and no radioactive releases.

It appears the NRC gave Markey’s office an early look at the event report from its private stock of information before it was posted on the agency’s website. How else would he have gotten the press release out so fast. This is flat out cheesy work. All federal agencies leak like sieves. NRC just happens to push a little harder for Ed Markey.

There is another problem with the NRC’s report, and that is that PR offices for the affected reactors never mentioned these reports to the NRC that took place throughout the weekend. And that comes after they were constantly providing updates via Twitter and Facebook. As for the NRC itself, why did it wait until Monday to release this information?

Post-Fukushima safety checks are done, but the size of the new build will be smaller

After five months China has mostly completed the safety inspections of its 11 GWe of nuclear energy plants. Work will resume on on the start of construction of new nuclear power stations. China temporarily suspended its nuclear new build on March 16, 2011.

In May 2011 the Chinese Environmental Ministry announced a series of supplemental measures to improve safety at the nation’s nuclear power plants. In August an IAEA team completed a review of China’s nuclear regulatory program with a series of recommendations to beef up its capabilities.

It’s not clear that work ever stopped on construction of reactor projects that had already broken ground. That includes four reactors being built by Westinghouse and two being built by Areva.

No operating reactors were reported to be closed by the inspections. The government did not released the results of the safety inspections. The report said that the safety checks would continue through October 2011.

“President Obama on Friday walked away from a commitment to reduce smog. That was obviously because he does not want to hamper a U.S. jobs recovery by making energy more expensive. But the president could, with a stroke of the pen, create thousands of high paid jobs and create huge amounts of smog-free energy. How? By getting his Office of Management and Budget to stop stonewalling loan guarantees for new nuclear energy projects.”

“… a series of posts which I plan to offer that will argue that current nuclear nonproliferation schemes are at best transitory, and are likely to undergo significant changes before the middle of the 21th century.”

Kirk Sorensen does not bother to apologize for a high level explanation of isotopic separation he jumps right in. So those who want to be challenged take a look at this three part series. He has been posting great stuff since he started the Forbes blog a short time ago. (quick definition of isotopic separation: Has to do with purifying the Uranium or other nuclear fuel like Plutonium or Thorium to prepare it for reactors or theoretically weapons.)

Some of my colleagues pointed me to the important article by British activist and journalist Mark Lynas. He explains very well how the hardship faced by Japanese residents living in fear and forced to leave their homes is far worse than returning with a properly assessed understanding of the true risks.